Of Forgetting @offorgetting - Tumblr Blog

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You know, when I was around 14, we went on a family trip to China. She had me stay in the hotel room alone without meeting extended family. She said she was too embarrassed by me being chubby, and I wasn't as naturally impressive as my brother. I'm thinking about all the countless of memories like this and how I was always deemed the problem. For what.. not being pretty? Not being able to drive like an asshole? For not manipulating friends or partners? The reasons my mother has for being disappointed in me are all the reasons I actually like myself.

#self

At home, I could tell my mother was angry with me. I went upstairs without notifying her, so she thought I had excused myself for the day. I wasn't attending her for about 10-15 minutes. When I went back downstairs, she asked if I'd gone to my room (without telling her). I clarified that I went upstairs to respond to an email, and then use the washroom. But was angry at this. She doesn't say so explicitly, but she feels like any action I perform should require permission. This includes going for walks, sitting in the backyard or on the front porch, etc. So she then pretended like I don't exist. She has this attitude towards us that I see in how she treats her friends as well. Like, "I'm going to show them a lesson."

I remember, as a kid, I would try so hard. And I'd say, "I love you, mommy," and her just glaring me down. I didn't hear her tell me she loves me until I was like.. 30 years old. Growing up, she'd just respond by telling me how I wasn't as pretty as she wanted, or as thin or similar to her in personality as she wanted. But she was always jealous that mothers and daughters that we knew had close relationships. She used to tell me it's because I didn't do enough for her and that she resented that I wasn't close enough with her (while she'd actively push me away).

It's odd, because as poorly as she treats me sometimes, as much abuse as she hurdles at my father, I think we're the only two who are actually close to her without it being a performance. Being my mother's daughter is being trapped in a lose-lose dynamic.

#self

I spent the last 6 hours driving my parents back and forth. My mum drove the last half hour. We went to a restaurant, and, while leaving, a truck was exiting straight. He had the right of way. If we waited just a few seconds, I could exit after him. My mother was screaming at me to be aggressive and to cut him off/ get in front of him. He was going slowly enough, and I felt so overwhelmed. I cut in front of him, turning left, and had to run over a curb in order to do so. There was no room for me to make a wide turn. She kept telling me what a failure I was. That right of way doesn’t matter - a real driver would have acted more quickly and not had to hit the curb to cut off another car.

I‘m a defensive driver.. I haven’t had any issues while driving alone. It’s with my mother that I feel bombarded.

After this, she switched with me, and she accidentally ran over the curb when she was turning too quickly into a parking lot.

We’re home now, and she said the tire is likely popped because of me.. I don’t think it is.. because the car has driven normally for the last half hour stretch home, as well as normally when I just drove to the pharmacy to pick up her prescription.

While telling me how incompetent I am, she said I sometimes get this dissociated look on my face - which she thinks is hereditary from my “father’s loser genes,” but I look like that because it’s my nervous system’s response to being screamed at continuously and put into needlessly intense situations.

#self

A past student reached out to say Happy Mother’s Day because she sees me as a maternal figure. I'm so touched. She had an interview recently and referenced in her interview something I used to say in class - that in order to love art, and love life by proxy, ‘you need to find a way to fall in love with the work of being lost.’ I guess my students really do listen to me when I think I'm talking to myself.

#self

#this made me so happy #Youtube

I'm going to visit and be with my partner in London in just a few weeks. He'll hold me, we'll sleep in, and I'll be normal again. I keep sitting down at my desk when I finally have time to myself in the evenings and I don't know entirely what I'm thinking or feeling or want to do. I end up anxiously sitting in a corner, very still, not really doing anything anymore outside of caring for my parents. I wake up to my mother screaming every morning. My nervous system is tapped out. Even though I'm not receiving the sort of physically or verbal abuse I used to growing up, everything still feels like it could transport me back in time to a point where I wasn't safe. I feel so disconnected from myself. I miss making joyful moments, feeling like I can freely move and go places. I miss my boyfriend. I miss like.. going to the vintage shop and getting a coffee lol. I miss the farmer's market. I miss sitting alone without feeling I might have my privacy invaded at any moment. I miss making art and wanting to make art. Just feeling really stuck.

#self

Just tired. I was making food for my dad (which is part of my day-to-day as a caretaker), and he was trying to teach me how to open the microwave. Which obviously I already know how to do. It's part of this quality of him just wanting to be relied upon. I went over to put something into the air fryer, which is next to the coffee maker. And as I opened the air fryer, he, still standing there observing me, started chuckling and said, "Hahahah you don't even know how to use the coffee machine- You're opening the air fryer!"

Whenever my father hears me in any room, he rushes over to observe me, chuckle, and say something to parentify and infantilize me in the same breath.

He's getting so much older and he's so dissociated, confused, and constantly trying to prove that he's not. He's trying, always, to prove something to me when I'm not even seeking it out. His emotional state is of panic because he is the main source of my mother's narcissistic supply.

In the car before, he missed a call from the doctor's office. When he called back, it was an automated voice prompting him to select where his call would be directed to. He kept saying, "HELLO? HELLO? Why aren't you responding? HELLO?" When I told him it was an automated message, he got angry and defensive and said, "I KNOW it's from the doctor! I'm not an idiot!" I said, again, gently, it's an automated message - Select Line #1. He shouted, "I ALREADY KNOW IT'S THE DOCTOR WHO CALLED, THIS PERSON CAN'T HEAR ME - I KNOW - I KNOW EVERYTHING!"

I don’t know how daunting it must feel to realize you’re getting older and battle with confusion you never used to have. All whilst having a younger spouse who’s constantly insulting and humiliating you and everything you do and everything you are. He regains his composure and rebounds from humiliation by condescending me instead, telling me I'm a mindless child who needs his wisdom.

As much empathy as I feel, I am a mother to my father, a manager for my mother's volatile emotions, and I don't have an identity when I'm here with them. I feel like I can never show impatience, anger, annoyance, frustration. I absorb all blame, defuse every tantrum, cook, clean, deal with every aftermath. And in every scenario in which my father feel ashamed and confused, he'll scream: “I KNOW EVERYTHING - IT'S YOU WHO DOESN'T KNOW!” I’M NOT THE ONE WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND - YOU ARE.” And then, rather than talk about it, his version of an apology is to chuckle and say, "You're still my little baby doll princess!" And, "Silly, childish little rascal."

And I'm just tired. Every day, my focus for the entirety of that day is on deescalating both parents. Two polar opposites with no conflict resolution skills both continuously needing validation. I feel like I have zero emotional energy.

I'm practicing setting boundaries with friends as well. And my saying "No" seems to throw others off. I feel like.. I act like a parent for so many people in my life and I just don't have the capacity to do that anymore. Whatever my current way of being is, it's just not sustainable. Everything is just a lot right now.

#self

Sent this to my partner, so I thought I might as well share here, too:

This is a comedian that I would regularly listen to during my drives to and from work. His newer standup performance struck a slightly more serious tone than usual, but I thought it was really great. I couldn’t help but write a lot of what he said in between jokes:

“Whether it feels like it or not, we are all each other’s responsibility”

He talks about young boys in this generation, growing up with social media and lack of intimate communities, and discourse that’s largely absent - such as the body dysmorphia of boys who then become body dysmorphic men. He talks about that show, Adolescence, and Incel culture.

“The hardest life you’re ever going to have to live is your own, which is why I do my best not to judge anybody. Because I think, genuinely, that if I had been born in a different time, I’d probably be just like them."

And he talks about how much we pick up through suggestion. He says at one point: “I don’t know that anyone was running up to young women, specifically, making sure that they felt like they were ugly - they just told them that everything that wasn’t them, was beautiful.”

Another two lines I jotted down, that I thought he articulated incisively:

“These incels - they don’t really hate women. They hate themselves. That’s where all that comes from.”

And,

“If you’re part of the world, then you’re worth the world”

#Josh Johnson #Youtube

“In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.”